


Hunger More Profound

by Ashentongue



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Dream Sequences, Feral Behavior, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Mind Games, Minor Character Death, Misuses of Magic, Obsessive Behavior, POV Peter, POV Stiles, Scent Marking, Slow Burn, character death will never be the main characters, unreliable narrators
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-03-08 09:39:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3204563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashentongue/pseuds/Ashentongue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a blood and brain matter rorschach on the far wall behind the deputy’s crumpled corpse. Stiles makes a noise that might be a hysterical bark of laughter, completely inappropriate. He thinks he sees a tree and wonders if Miss Morrell would calmly tell him to keep going while hell closes in.<br/>-<br/>Peter plays the long game to gain power while Stiles just wants to make it through school alive with his friends. Interrupted by the impending apocalypse, neither of them gets what they want, forced to band together in a struggle for survival.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the beginning of a long journey involving zombies, dealing with zombies and mental breakdowns, and dealing with relationship developments while trying to survive zombies. Did I say zombies yet?
> 
> Post-Nogitsune Stiles. Pre-Benefactor Peter. Earlier than canon appearances by Braeden. Chris is still in town with Allison, who did not die. Content may be triggering and tags will be added as I go along. End notes in future chapters will contain spoilers for those who need to know things prior to venturing into the mine shaft. Rating will go up.

[ [**soundtrack**](http://8tracks.com/ashentongue/hunger-more-profound-zombiepocalypse-steter) ]

 

**I**

 

Stiles wakes up on an ordinary Sunday and everything feels wrong. He gets out of bed and goes through his morning rituals with a sick feeling at the pit of his stomach and an ache in his bones like he’s suddenly 90 years old and thinks he can feel a storm coming.

 

He spits out toothpaste, rinses his mouth, and goes down for breakfast. Nothing is out of place— sunlight is streaming in through the windows, he can hear birds singing outside, and the smell of coffee tickles his nose enticingly.

 

“Morning, son,” says the Sheriff and pours Stiles a cup.

 

He wraps his fingers around the mug, hoping the heat will chase away the nagging dread that’s trying to nip at the back of his neck and settle itself into his spine. He mumbles something that might be a morning, close enough at least that his dad seems to accept it as such.

 

He makes his coffee extra sweet and drinks it slowly while the Sheriff scans the paper with tired eyes. It’s only after half a cup that Stiles notes the uniform and how his dad looks ready to leave any minute.

 

“Thought you were off today.”

 

The Sheriff lowers the paper slowly and sighs, not looking up. “There’s been an incident, they need some help handling it.”

 

The dread digs itself in like claws at the base of Stiles’s skull and he tries to read his dad’s expression. It’s tense and pinched but at the same time sad in a way that Stiles recognises. It’s a little bit like when mom died.

 

“Somebody died, didn’t they,” Stiles says and watches his dad’s expression change when their eyes meet.

 

“I want you to stay out of this, Stiles,” the Sheriff says with determination. “No sneaking around and no funny werewolf business either unless I determine this to be another case of—of you know.”

 

Stiles’s fingers tighten on the mug and he feels numb, thinking of blood splattered across white and blue tiles.

 

“Yeah. Okay. But dad—“ He stops, hesitates. “Just. Promise you’ll call if anything seems off. I won’t run straight into a monster’s maw, I swear. We can like. Have Derek sniff around or something.”

 

Not that Stiles himself will stay out of whatever it might be, but offering Derek up as the canary to fly into the mine shaft seems more acceptable to his dad most of the time because Derek is a sort-of adult. Stiles thinks they might even get along now that Derek is no longer wanted for or even suspected of any murders.

 

Stiles looks up to see his dad giving him an assessing look before speaking. “You okay, kiddo?”

 

There’s pressure at the back of Stiles’s neck, but when he tries to focus on the feeling, it evades him and remains nameless.

 

“Yeah. Guess I didn’t sleep well.” Truthfully, Stiles can’t remember how he slept, but his dad’s expression softens in understanding. They don’t talk about the nightmares.

 

“Alright, well,” the Sheriff says and gets up with a grunt. “Behave yourself while I’m out. I’ll call if things get weird,” he adds before Stiles has the chance to insist.

 

His dad ruffles his hair on his way out, and Stiles is left to drink his coffee in silence. The weird feeling ebbs and flows inside him like something rising from the ground to pull him down towards the dirt.

 

He smells wood and blood. It takes another cup of strong coffee to drown the ghost scents out.

 

[x]

 

“You’re not doing too well there, wolf boy. C’mon, super reflexes no match for lil’ ol’ me?” Stiles taunts Scott and waggles an eyebrow over the laptop screen, gaining a snort from his friend.

 

Scott has spent most of the match running at his targets, trying to take them down fast and ending up in rooftop chases that waste time and net low kill scores. It causes enough chaos that Stiles slips most of his kills in unnoticed, racking up style points.

 

“You’re cheating, dude!”

 

“Oh no, my friend. It’s called tactical thinking. Live and learn,” Stiles says while sneaking up on Scott’s clueless assassin, tapping the command to poison and sauntering off to blend into a crowd before any retaliation can be had.

 

“Underhanded,” Scott complains and rolls his chair back after the round ends, leaving Stiles to bask in the sweet afterglow of having the top score.

 

“Gotta use your brain too, Scotty-boy.” Stiles gets up and pats Scott’s shoulder on his way to slouch on the bed. “Everything’s fair in love and following the assassin’s creed.”

 

“Jerk,” Scott chuckles and grabbed the back of Stiles’s neck in passing, giving a shake and releasing his grip.

 

It might be odd werewolf behavior from his friend’s part, but Scott’s easy-going affection makes the ball of stress in the pit of Stiles’s stomach ease slightly. After the Nogitsune he sort of imagined he might know how Derek feels. The guilt was overwhelming at first, but every time he starts to feel like he might be drowning, Scott has been there.

 

Scott touches him just as easily as before, grounding him with a brotherly clap on the shoulder now and then, bumping their shoulders together when they joke, and giving brief celebratory embraces whenever they do well on the field.

 

The dread is no longer a throbbing, urgent feeling. It’s a pebble worn smooth by water, and Stiles is awake.

 

“Hey,” Stiles starts and wets his lips, easing himself down to lay on his back on Scott’s bed. Scott has his hand in the bowl of chips, munching away and giving a quizzical look.

 

“Have you thought about. You know,” Stiles says and makes a broad gesture with one arm like he’s planning on painting the ceiling a different color. “Life after high school. College. Work. All that serious stuff in the horizon.”

 

_Are we stuck here forever,_ he wants to ask. Killing things that the Nemeton drags in like a shining beacon for all the things that go bump in the night and want to eat our tender flesh.

 

Scott cocks his head to one side but doesn’t question the sudden change of topic. It isn’t even close to Stiles’s most confusing non sequiturs.

 

“You know how I feel. I’m not gonna let all the weird stuff rule my life, but …” Scott shrugs and clenches his hand. “I can’t deny being a part of it now, either. Think I wanna stay local, protect everyone I can and try to avoid failing all my classes at the same time.”

 

Scott’s honesty makes Stiles’s insides feel weird. Maybe it’s pride or gratitude because his friend is a much better person than he is.

 

He laughs before any embarrassing waterworks start. “No flunking while I’m around, buddy. I’ll drag you through everything, just like I’ve done so far.”

 

Stiles means every word. Maybe he could get out of Beacon Hills, get into criminology studies or psychology somewhere else. He is smart enough to get into some pretty good colleges, not Lydia-level smart, but he does pretty well when he has meds and stays on the ball.

 

But he isn’t going to leave Scott.

 

Scott’s smile is blinding and Stiles rolls his eyes, lightly slapping his friend’s arm with the back of his hand. “Save that look for Allison. Guessing she’s sticking around near you and Isaac? God, that’s still so weird,” Stiles mutters and gives Scott a firm side-eyeing for his personal life choices.

 

“It’s not that weird,” Scott defends and has the decency to blush.

 

“It’s weird because it’s like sex-Tetris in my head and I don’t know which one of you is the squiggly block and please don’t tell me even if I get curious later and ask for all the sordid details, okay? So, they’re sticking with you?”

 

Scott is getting that slightly dreamy look and Stiles begins to regret even asking. “Yeah, I mean, even Allison’s dad has been more okay with us. He’s been spending time with me and Isaac without getting that whole, you know, smile on his face that actually means he wants to shoot someone.”

 

Stiles doesn’t make the obvious hunter and his hunting dogs joke. He probably has used it at least once already.

 

“Uh huh,” he says instead and lets Scott go on and on about how awesome both Allison and Isaac are.

 

The tiny bite of jealousy he feels reminds him of how sweet Scott’s suffering tasted. He tries to compartmentalize, locking the memory inside a box labeled ‘void creep’ and shoving it somewhere deep in his mind.

 

[x]

 

Stiles is getting coffee at Mocha Mae’s when he hears the local radio. A bus drove off a cliff just outside Beacon Hills and there were no survivors. The news broadcast doesn’t go into details, only stating that the Beacon County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the accident.

 

He calls his dad and tries to wheedle information out of him, but there’s no persuading a busy Sheriff and Stiles gets hung up on after a firm warning to stay out of it unless something supernaturally sinister truly is afoot.

 

To Stiles, a warning like that just means that he can’t show up himself. Scott is out with his girl-and-boyfriend combo platter, so after a moment’s hesitation, Stiles gets in the Jeep and heads for Derek’s loft.

 

[x]

 

Stiles knocks hard on the rusted metal door of Derek’s loft. The sound echoes in the empty hall and he tracks the cracks on the wall with his gaze. The whole building is empty and he finds that a bit odd, wonders if Derek even has permission to live here or if he just moved in uninvited like he did with the old train depot.

 

When there’s no immediate answer, Stiles starts shifting his weight from one foot to the other, wondering if he should have called ahead. Maybe Derek is out somewhere, howling at the moon.

 

But then there are footsteps and the door slides open. Stiles jerks his head up just in time to see Derek’s expression shift from something he’s never seen before back to his usual scowl.

 

It takes Stiles a moment to analyze what he just saw, but when he does, he can’t stop the words from spilling out. “Whoa. You looked eager for a moment there, were you waiting for someone else?”

 

“No,” Derek says instantly, but Stiles doesn’t need to be a werewolf to know that’s a lie because Derek’s ears turn a little red.

 

“Oh my God, you were expecting a girl! Good for you, but if she turns out to be another serial killer, I’m staging an intervention.”

 

Derek doesn’t look happy, but he never does so Stiles ignores the resting bitch-face and squeezes in past the werewolf’s bulk. Derek makes an aborted motion like he wants to grab Stiles by the collar and drag him back out, but then he seems to resign himself to his fate and slides the door shut.

 

“What are you doing here, Stiles?”

 

The question dispels Stiles’s amusement and he exhales breath, circling around once before throwing his weight onto the couch and spreading his limbs on it. He knows Derek won’t sit anyway.

 

“I’ve had this sort of weird feeling today,” he hedges the topic and tries to avoid thinking how crazy it sounds.

 

He glances up briefly and feels a little better when Derek doesn’t snort or give him the stink eye for getting in the way of whatever he had planned for the evening. The werewolf stands still with his arms crossed, watching Stiles like he’s actually interested in why Stiles feels off.

 

“You think something is up?”

 

Stiles leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He stares down at his own hands, picking at the skin near his chewed up nails. He isn’t counting his fingers.

 

“Yeah, I mean … you heard about the bus accident, right?” Stiles glances up again to see Derek nod. Some of the tension bleeds from his shoulders then and he sighs. He looks down again to avoid seeing the way Derek’s expression softens, like he knows that Stiles sometimes has to make sure that others see and hear the same things he does.

 

“You think it wasn’t an accident,” Derek asks in his typical way that sounds more like a statement.

 

Stiles rubs at his head and resists the urge to grasp and tug at his hair. It would do nothing to help the way his skin feels two sizes too small.

 

“It’s weird, isn’t it? Shouldn’t there be at least a few survivors? We don’t exactly have Grand Canyon cliffs over in Beacon Hills.”

 

Derek’s jaw tenses when he thinks and Stiles can feel the weight of the werewolf’s intense scrutiny. He waits, fearing the explanation to be something inside his own head, fearing that Derek is going to tell him he’s being paranoid.

 

“I’ll go see what I can get out of the crash site.”

 

Stiles’s head jerks up and he blinks at Derek once before stumbling to his feet stiffly. “That’s—yeah, that’s great. Maybe you can smell something dad and the deputies missed. Maybe I should—”

 

“No,” Derek grunts right away, but he continues in a softer tone, “I’ll get it done faster alone.”

 

Stiles suspects that Derek just doesn’t want to worry about protecting him, but he doesn’t argue further. He doesn’t want to go into the woods tonight.

 

“Fine, go. Call me when you’re done sniffing around, I want to know even if you don’t find anything.”

 

Derek rolls his eyes and doesn’t respond, grabbing his leather jacket and throwing it on over his white wifebeater before heading out.

 

Stiles draws in a breath and feels jittery as he speaks at Derek’s back. “Be careful out there, big guy. Full moon and all, you don’t know what kind of things like to come out and run in the woods.”

 

Derek glances over his shoulder to give Stiles an unamused stare.

 

After the metal door scrapes shut, Stiles lingers in the loft, staring out through the huge windows and touching the book somebody has left on the table next to the clunky brass lamp.

 

Derek doesn’t seem the type to read something by a guy called Haruki Murakami, but Stiles realizes he doesn’t know all that much about Derek. He has no idea what the werewolf did before he had to come back to Beacon Hills and start babysitting teenagers. Maybe he had been a foreign literature major or he had worked at a bookstore.

 

Stiles flips through a few pages of _1Q84_ but he can’t focus on any words, so he wanders over to the spiral staircase to rest a hand on the cold railing.

 

He’s touching the cold steel of a katana and the Nogitsune’s grin is a slash in the darkness. He presses the sharp edge into his flesh and his palm begins to bleed, dripping perfect circles of crimson onto pristine white.

 

Stiles comes back to his senses trembling and gripping the railing so hard that his knuckles are colorless. He loosens his grip but doesn’t let go, places his foot on the first step and begins to ascend.

 

“I’m awake,” he says and keeps his gaze on the steps. He just needs some air.

 

The evening is chilly for California, colder than it usually is in March. Stiles’s skin raises up into goose flesh on his bare arms, but he doesn’t roll his sleeves down because the sting of cool air reassures him of being awake.

 

He hasn’t been up on the roof often. Derek’s balcony is completely bare, but the rooftop has a neat railing in place to prevent people from falling to their death, which Stiles appreciates. There’s a row of terracotta flower pots on one side, filled with black soil but barren of plant growth.

 

He looks up at the violent sky, orange bleeding into the purple and blue of twilight. He can only see a few stars here and there, the brightest pushing through the small town’s light pollution.

 

“There’s a full worm moon tonight.”

 

Stiles startles badly at the voice coming from behind him. He stumbles and flails as he turns to face Peter Hale’s back. The werewolf is jacketless in the cold air, a dark silhouette against the sky like somebody cut his shape out of reality.

 

“Jesus! Have you been up here the whole time?” Stiles’s heart is slowly settling back where it belongs instead of his throat. He’s irked. Trust Peter to be present when he was least wanted.

 

“No, I flew up here while you were talking with Derek,” Peter says in a tone that implies the ‘idiot’ at the end.  For a brief moment Stiles entertains the thought of shoving Peter over the railing.

 

“Ugh, fine, I don’t even care what you’re doing. I just want some air. Hope you haven’t poisoned that with your presence.”

 

Stiles pointedly stomps away from Peter to the opposite railing and drags in a deep breath there. The weird pressure at the back of his skull is back and it draws his gaze to the rising moon. It’s bloated and hangs low in the sky, sickly and yellow.

 

He thinks of a river filled with corpses that have skin that color. He doesn’t know why he has vivid memories of horrible things that he has never witnessed himself, but he thinks they’re another unwanted gift from the Nogitsune. Shards wedged into his mind like slivers of glass that are too thin and too deep to get out.

 

“Certain humans are affected by the moon as well,” Peter says conversationally from where he’s standing, looking over at the town’s lights. Stiles jerks again because he forgot about Peter for a moment.

 

“Lunatics, you mean,” he answers bitterly, thinking that’s what Peter is after. He just wants to get under Stiles’s skin by pointing out what everyone knows, how Stiles fell apart and came back together wrong.  

 

Everyone else keeps quiet about it and tries to be supportive, but sometimes that makes Stiles want to scream. Peter is still the same insensitive asshole he’s been ever since he crawled out of his own grave, and Stiles kind of likes that about him.

 

“Emissaries,” Peter says unexpectedly and Stiles glances over at the lack of sarcasm. “Witches, druids … people who have that special spark.”

 

“You think I’m reacting to the moon?” Stiles asks doubtfully. From where he’s facing, Peter can probably see most of Beacon Hills. The treeline Stiles is looking at is dark and void of motion.

 

“I don’t presume to know what you’re reacting to. I’m only saying that people like yourself sense things untalented humans are blind to.”

 

It sounds a lot like reassurance even if Peter has that slightly patronizing tone again.

 

“Do you sense things?”

 

The question seems to startle Peter because he turns to face Stiles. His eyes are electric in the twilight, cold and scrutinizing. Stiles stares at the dip right between the werewolf’s collarbones, nestled in the deep v of his shirt collar. Peter doesn’t feel the cold like Stiles does, he knows because the hair on Peter’s arms isn’t sticking up.

 

“Why do you think I might?”

 

“I don’t know,” Stiles says, but he knows that isn’t true. Peter feels something weird too and Stiles’s bones know why, but his mind can’t remember.

 

Peter’s gaze feels like needles on Stiles’s skin, but the wolf doesn’t press for a better answer. He turns back around and Stiles wonders if he ever shows his back to the others. He probably doesn’t, but Stiles won’t delude himself into thinking it’s a sign of trust. Peter doesn’t see Stiles as a threat because Peter is an asshole who believes in werewolf superiority through and through.

 

In Stiles’s opinion, all it takes to prove Peter wrong is a single jar of mountain ash.

 

“Well, it’s been fun. Let’s do this … creepy moon meeting thing again never,” Stiles says before he feels too much like testing that werewolf flight theory.

 

“Stiles,” Peter says just as Stiles sets his foot on the first step down. The town’s lights behind Peter are bright, warm gold where Peter’s eyes are cold blue.

 

“Be careful.”

 

Stiles stares until Peter is the one to look away first. He leaves Derek’s loft, mind racing with thoughts he doesn’t want to have. There’s a murder of crows in a tree outside his house and he can feel their dead eyes follow him all the way in.

 

[x]

 

The worm moon is visible through bare branches as Stiles walks through the Preserve, drawn along a straight line like a fish slowly getting reeled in.

 

He needs to get to the center, the place where everything connects, the above and below, the visible and the unseen.

 

The air around the Nemeton is thick with the smell of moist soil and wet wood, copper and rotting meat, bone dust and black tar. Stiles steps onto the dead stump and feels the growth rings with his bare toes.

 

The bottom of his feet are wet and sticky, and he can feel power seep through him in a downward spiral. He feels himself spread thin, his life feeding the roots that push their way through the earth and reach for the sky, skeletal and bare fingers longing for the unattainable.

 

Stiles tilts his head back and the moon bathes his face in yellow. His skin begins to wither and shrivel.

 

A noise dispels the forest from his mind and Stiles comes to his senses slowly, sluggishly like he’s been hibernating.

 

His phone is blowing up, and for a moment Stiles thinks he passed out spread across the Nemeton, but the smell of linen slowly clears his muddled thoughts and he knows which way is up and which down.

 

His mouth tastes like dirt and his insides squirm like snakes.

 

“H’lo?”

 

“Stiles, listen carefully!” His father’s voice hits him like a bucket of ice water. Stiles jerks up and stares out the window at the violently orange sky, only a fraction brighter than when he went to bed.

 

Derek never called, he remembers. When he tried to call, there was no answer so he left a message that said ‘you better be getting laid’ and went to bed.

 

“Dad? What’s wr—”

 

He gets interrupted by the Sheriff’s all-business voice, even and forceful, but he can hear the strain of emergency behind it. “Stiles, lock yourself in the basement, don’t argue, just do it. Wait there until I come get you, okay? I’ll be there as soon as—”

 

The call cuts off suddenly and Stiles is trembling and breaking out in cold sweat. He thumbs at his phone, but it acts as if there’s no network access. He has a single unread message from an unknown number, simply stating ‘Call when you get this’. The lack of a saved contact combined to the rude imperative makes him suspect it’s from Peter.

 

Peter, who has never reached out of his own volition. That, the lack of contact from Derek, and his dad’s Emergency Mode Voice all make Stiles’s blood run cold.

 

He keeps trying the phone while throwing on clothes. He falls once, one leg inside his pants halfway, his elbow hitting the edge of the desk so hard that he has to fight back the tears smarting his eyes.

 

Nothing works, the network doesn’t come back after a while and powering the phone off and back on does nothing. There’s no wi-fi connection either, and a cursory glance at the modem box reveals a lack of internet connection entirely.

 

He isn’t going to the basement. The air outside is dry and smells like copper, and the Jeep swerves hard as Stiles jerks it out of the driveway onto the street.

 

One family is packing frantically while another mills around their yard like they’ve no idea what’s going on. Stiles turns on the radio with a quick jab of the finger; pop songs blast through one after the other, jarringly cheerful and chopped into tiny bites of noise when Stiles skips to another channel.

 

The local radio crackles into life with a man talking, low and urgent.

 

“— _walking out of the hospital and going after anything that moves like a mass of_ —”

 

The channel explodes into stuttering static before Stiles can make heads or tails of what he was hearing. There’s a sudden motion then and he jerks his head up just in time to see somebody run straight onto the street from the bushes at the side of the road.

 

“Holy sh—”

 

He spins the steering wheel and hits the brakes, but the person is too close and the car collides with flesh. The accompanying sound is a sickening thump and a feel of the force that throws the Jeep off-course.

 

Stiles is vaguely aware of sliding to a halt and he doesn’t move in his seat for what feels like minutes. When he finally starts, he goes into a motion that’s quick and precise in a way he can never manage when he’s trying to make conscious effort.

 

The person he hit is lying off to the side with a trail of blood leading over to the Jeep. Her – because it’s a woman, Stiles can sort of see that – limbs are all wrong, sticking out in angles that aren’t possible on a living person. Stiles can’t see her face, only the arched line of her throat that’s stained red.

 

“Oh God. Oh God,” he whispers and fumbles at his phone even though it doesn’t work. There’s a man there as well, somebody from a nearby house and he’s yelling something but Stiles can’t hear the words.

 

The blacktop smells like wet soil.

 

The woman’s twisted limbs twitch and move. Bones pop and there’s a wet squelch of flesh followed by an exhalation of breath that rattles like a bag of bones in a hoarse wind.

 

The head turns towards Stiles and the eyes that stare at him are blank, covered in a milky white sheen and possessing an eerie inner glow. He takes one step back and the bloody body jerks like something out of a horror movie, frames cut so the motion is jagged and choppy.

 

“Wake up,” Stiles whispers to himself, but when he takes another step back, the body is still there, twisted and bleeding and twitching in sync with his motions like he’s pulling its strings and it wants to come to him.

 

She looks familiar somehow. Tina? Nina? Stiles is reminded of the smell of iodine and Mrs McCall’s smile. A nurse, that’s how he knows her. He saw her at his mother’s bedside.

 

She was soft-spoken and patient then. Now she’s bare-foot and covered in filth. She doesn’t move like a human.

 

Her mouth hangs open when she hobbles on broken limbs, a scarecrow with a maw filled with blackness and teeth stained with blood. The man who was yelling before is backing away, turning to run, and that’s what Stiles does as well. He slams the Jeep’s door shut and drives.

 

_Wakeupwakeupwakeup_ is the mantra that runs through his mind, but every single one of his senses is telling him that he’s already awake.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for Peter being Peter. This is a short chapter, the next one will be longer!

**II**

 

After Stiles is gone, Peter follows the boy’s scent downstairs, inhaling as he descends one slow step at a time, letting the sound of boots on metal echo in Derek’s sparsely decorated home.

 

They both keep bare dens now, ones they can abandon without much sentimentality. Peter has always made contingency plans, spread resources wide and made sure he wouldn’t lose it all should one location get compromised.

 

Derek understands the need now. If only his nephew had learnt the lesson sooner. If only Talia had listened to Peter. If, if, if. A useless line of thought that Peter abandons. He has to use what he has now.

 

Peter circles the couch where Stiles’s scent is strongest. He turns his head slowly to the side and lets his lips part, dragging in smell until he can almost taste the salt of the boy’s skin.

 

The moon tugs at him, trying to pull the shift out of him. It’s harder to resist than usual.

 

Peter thinks of dirt and roots, surrounding him and caging him in under floorboards that smell of ashes. He thinks of the moon, pulling at him and setting quicksilver fire to his dead veins. The smell of blood fused with an alpha’s power was the first thing to hit his senses after he was alive again.

 

He can smell the power in Stiles. It’s primal and older than werewolves, older than humans even. He looks at Stiles and sees a boy who could bottle a thunderstorm. A boy who could bend the Nemeton to his will.

 

The others are blind to it. If they weren’t, they’d do something about it, try to harness it or be fearful of the potential sleeping inside Stiles. Their prized true alpha chooses to acknowledge only the things he wants to, and thus sees nothing but a fragile human in his best friend.

 

Peter knows Stiles could be so much more.

 

Exhaling a slow breath, he walks to the desk. He picks up the book that also carries Stiles’s scent, and the restless feeling inside him grows when he bows his head to inhale the way his own scent combines with the boy’s.

 

Stiles’s mere existence has shifted Peter’s plans multiple times. He still wants what’s rightfully his, but now he wants more than the mantle of alpha back on his shoulders.

 

He wants Stiles’s loyalty. He wants the boy’s clever mind and sharp wit. He senses the budding power and he _wants_.

 

Peter is not a patient man, but he came to know the folly of impatience. He won’t make the same mistake twice. There will be openings to exploit, and he will wait until he smells weakness. Until then, he’ll play pack with Derek to avoid directly submitting to the humiliation of being Scott’s beta.

 

Drawing on the knowledge that his prize is worth the wait, Peter sits down to read and ignores the pull of the moon while he waits for Derek to return with information.

 

[x]

 

It very much isn’t Derek that Peter hears approach several hours later. He opens the door before the visitor has a chance to knock and he gives her an appraising once-over. The bounty hunter is wearing black biker leathers and holding a helmet under one arm. A look of distaste twists her lips when she sees him.

 

“Oh, it’s you. Make yourself useful and go get Derek.”

 

Peter’s jaw clenches but he gives her a smile that’s all teeth. “Nice to see you too, Braeden. Afraid Derek isn’t in right now, come back never,” he says and tries to pull the door shut.

 

Of course she muscles her way right in and Peter sighs, turning to follow her with his gaze. She’s impressive for a human, physically fit with a will of steel and a pragmatic attitude that Peter can appreciate.

 

Peter thinks of Paige and how she was too weak. Derek started picking strong females after that, ones that were confident and not afraid to show it.

 

Unfortunately all that led to is Peter having two bloody claw marks in the ‘Derek’s former girlfriends’ -column. He wonders if this one will get added to that number.

 

“Where is he?”

 

Peter considers lying, but the truth might gain him more. Derek has been gone far longer than he’s comfortable with. “He went to examine an accident site outside town. We’ve reason to suspect foul play.”

 

Braeden raises an eyebrow at him. “And you didn’t go with him?”

 

“He said he would do it quicker alone. I’m not my nephew’s keeper.” Granted, Derek hadn’t told him that directly, but he’d known Peter was there and didn’t ask for his company.

 

She scoffs and turns on her heels, pulling out her phone to call Derek. Peter can hear the phone ring for a while with no answer and he struggles to keep his expression neutral. The thought of having to bury Derek twined in wolfsbane is both titillating and unsettling.

 

Braeden tries twice before she puts her phone away and turns to Peter. “Alright, you’re coming with me.”

 

“Am I?” he asks and wonders when she started imagining that he’s a trained dog for her to command. He might have to do something to rid her of that illusion when the opportunity arises.

 

Derek loves to follow an alpha. Peter _is_ the alpha. She will learn that.

 

“You want to find him, I want to find him, you’ve the nose to track him and I’ve the means to kill anything that looks at us sideways. Come on.”

 

For a brief moment Peter has to consider if he really does want to find Derek, but in the end he has to agree. Derek is a very useful tool, especially now that he’s grown attached to the idea of his uncle’s _rehabilitation_.

 

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll get my coat.”

 

[x]

 

Braeden has a motorcycle and Peter bristles at the thought of having to hold onto her while they ride. She browsed on her phone mere minutes to figure out where the accident took place. She claims her bike will get them there faster via shortcuts. Peter acquiesces because he has a BMW he isn’t planning on wrecking in some supernatural event.  

 

Before they go, he sends a request for contact to Stiles. An offer to keep Stiles in the loop where others have failed to do so will make him appreciate Peter.

 

The boy came out fractured from the possession, but the others are making a mistake in excluding Stiles to protect him from future hazards. It will only make the boy resent them. Peter fully intends to use that to his advantage and reap the rewards.

 

He would also prefer to keep the boy close at hand if they do find pieces of Derek scattered across the woods.

 

Derek’s new girlfriend drives like a bat out of hell. The pull on Peter’s primal side is urgent and powerful, forcing him to focus on keeping his hands clawless where they grip her sides.

 

He thinks he smells wet soil even over the burning stench of gasoline.

 

Peter knows he should feel it if Derek is dead, but his pack connection has been dull and stunted ever since he crawled back to the land of the living.

 

He refuses to let the sharp knife of loss carve chunks out of him again. It won’t feel like losing a limb if he won’t think of them as such. Losing a useful tool is regrettable, but he can recover from that.

 

[x]

 

They come across the Camaro at the edge of the woods just outside town. The doors are locked and nothing is amiss so presumably Derek left it there and continued on foot.

 

Braeden smirks when Peter circles around trying to catch a scent – no doubt she has a poor dog joke in mind – and he has to remind himself that ripping her throat out now would serve no purpose.

 

A mist drifts between the trees and animals make faint noise where they stalk prey in the dark. The air hangs thick and heavy, charged with a pressure that’s almost familiar. Peter can’t place the feeling, refuses to feel unsettled. He’s an apex predator and fearing darkness is for children.

 

He focuses on scent alone. The trails left by animals are quickly discarded. Derek smells familiar and comforting, feral strength under a veneer of human comforts.

 

He only manages to take two steps after the scent trail before he hears something that makes him jerk his head up and listen on instinct.

 

“What? What is it?” Braeden asks and grips her shotgun, her stance firm. Her gaze is scanning their surroundings for a foe.

 

Peter has to make a decision quickly to avoid raising suspicion. He picks the truth. “Scott is calling for help. It sounds serious,” he adds. “If Derek can hear that, he’ll head there, or he may already be there.”

 

She narrows her eyes. “And if he isn’t?”

 

He scoffs, already turning to head back to her black-and-chrome motorcycle. “I’m sure he’d still want you to save his true alpha first.”

 

It takes her a moment to decide, but then she’s following him. “You better have some idea where to go.”

 

“We’ll get there,” he says and waits until she’s on to get on the bike behind her. Peter yells driving instructions over her shoulder and goes through scenarios in his head to try and prepare for what might await.

 

[x]

 

None of his imagined scenarios come anywhere close to reality.

 

They drive past what looks like the start of a riot and the streets are clogged with cars in places, forcing Braeden to weave through or circle by through the sidewalk. Lights are turning on up in the windows on both sides of the street.

 

Peter catches sight of white eyes and turns his head, but they drive away too fast for him to make sense of what he saw. He smells something in the air, a slap of scent like that of thick, tar black swamp water. It’s out of place in the city.

 

The brewing trouble on the streets is nothing compared to the complete chaos they’re faced with at the hospital. The motorcycle screeches to a halt with an accompanying stench of burning rubber.

 

“Holy shit,” Braeden says and Peter can’t help but agree.

 

At a glance it looks like humans are attacking other humans, but Peter instantly knows there’s something very wrong with the ones that are chasing others. Their motions are jerky, limbs going from still to thrusting abruptly. The movements are stilted but purposeful.

 

Marionettes pulled by invisible strings. Demons in human skin, preying on their former kin. Something smells sweet in the same manner deadly nightshade does.

 

The creatures hunt with occasional bursts of speed that he imagines human eyes have trouble registering. He sees a human running at full speed escape, but a slower individual gets taken down by two former nurses in blood-stained clothes.

 

He can smell blood, can hear blunt teeth tear through flesh. It seems the creatures don’t care that human teeth aren’t designed to tear someone’s throat out. The human’s scream fades into a wet gurgle when his arterial blood sprays across the wet grass.

 

Peter looks up and sees Scott at the hospital door.

 

The whelp is guiding a group of humans inside, turning to block the progress of a swarm of the hungering, swamp-smelling creatures. The odds look overwhelming even for a true alpha to overcome and Peter calculates that Scott would come out of the fight weak and injured, if at all.

 

It feels like the chance he’s been waiting a long time for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope there are people out there who are okay with slow burn and plot twists. Peter and Stiles will reunite soon enough, but I'll go through some scenes until that happens so hang in there!


	3. Chapter 3

**III**

 

Stiles brushes his sleeve over his eyes as he drives, but nothing gets rid of the increasingly unnerving things he sees on the way to the sheriff’s station. The sound of glass breaking rings through the air as a large group robs a convenience store like it’s the end of days.

 

They aren’t people that look like the usual criminals. Stiles knows because he has seen those around at the station all his life. He thinks he sees a pair of children huddled close to the forms of the adults doing the robbing, but he doesn’t slow down to check.

 

The woman’s face, dominated by a blank hunger, is stuck behind his eyes.

 

Several cars are blocking one road and Stiles can’t tell what’s going on, if the movement he sees are people talking or fighting. He turns the wheel sharply and takes the Jeep on another route. The row of trees lining the road are dropping their leaves and he barely acknowledges seeing glimpses of fluttering yellow.

 

He sees more people packing and has to dodge cars whose drivers seem to have forgotten all traffic regulations, swerving dangerously off their lanes.

 

By the time he gets to the station, his hands are shaking again badly. It offers no comfort that he recognizes the car out front—the black SUV of Chris Argent.

 

He parks near it and gets out, jerking when he hears something down the street. People screaming and shapes moving rapidly, too far to see details. He looks down and there’s blood at his feet, smeared across the blacktop like a bad paint job and gleaming a wet red.

 

“Stiles!”

 

It’s his dad’s voice, but Stiles takes a moment to react, like his mind is an insect struggling in tar, caught and horrified because it knows everything ends in slow expiration. When he turns, he stares blankly at the wildly gesturing sheriff.

 

“I _told_ you to stay at—for god’s sake, Stiles!”

 

“What’s going on?” Stiles asks and finally jerks into motion, realizing he’s distracted by the noises he keeps hearing. The screaming. He didn’t take any medication before he left, and his brain is running frantic circles around itself.

 

His dad meets him halfway to the doors and grabs him by the arm, drawing him inside. Stiles turns his head when they close the door and a deputy makes sure it’s locked. The guy gives him a weird, tense look, skin pale and sweaty. Stiles can’t remember his name, just remembers that he’s deputy Graeme’s replacement.

 

The station is full of people and Stiles is assaulted by snippets of murmured conversation from all sides.

 

“—it’s full-blown chaos out there, emergency action plans don’t do us much good when there are no people to enforce—”

 

“—the hospital is the worst of it, we can’t even get anywhere near to—”

 

“What about evacuating?”

 

“Think people haven’t thought of that on their own? Half the hell out there is from people running around like headless—”

 

A firm hand squeezes Stiles’s shoulder and he looks up at his dad’s tired face. “What’s going on?” he repeats numbly.

 

“Come on,” the sheriff says and herds Stiles along, keeping a hand on his shoulder as they head to the back where they keep their overnight ‘customers’.

 

They walk past Chris Argent who is handing out assault rifles to the deputies and explaining something in a low voice. Stiles slows down to stare, and Mr Argent turns his head to meet his gaze. There’s tension around his eyes and he isn’t smiling.

 

“Chris,” Stiles’s dad says and jerks his head for Mr Argent to follow.

 

A man in civilian clothes is sitting quietly in a corner, holding a teenager in a loose embrace, expression despondent. Stiles jerks his gaze away and walks after the sheriff until they’re away from the stink of fear that fills the main room of the small station.

 

“Okay, you need to tell me something now,” Stiles says and turns so he can look at both his dad and Mr Argent. “Anything. Everything. I saw this—this woman out there and she was—”

 

He can’t continue and dry swallows instead, his throat clicking.

 

“You need to stay away from people who look weird like that,” his dad starts, then stops and draws breath, dragging a hand over his face. “We’ve a serious situation, people turning rabid and attacking others. The—the dead coming back, those people who were in the bus accident? It started there.”

 

Stiles stares in disbelief before letting out a sharp bark of laughter. “So what you’re saying is that it’s a fucking zombie apocalypse.”

 

Neither Mr Argent nor his dad look amused. Stiles isn’t either, but a part of him still thinks he might wake up soon and leave this nightmare vision behind.

 

“Why didn’t you call me? This is a really obviously supernatural _thing_ like I—”

 

The sheriff draws himself up from his tired slouch and frowns. “This _thing_ spread like wildfire, we had no idea how serious it was at first. I wanted you _safe_ , not running on the streets thinking you can fix it with your friends.”

 

Stiles bites his lip and looks past his dad at what he can see of the holding cells. There’s a man lying on one of the bunks, only his legs visible. His boots look like the ones the deputies wear.

 

“So what is it?”

 

It’s Mr Argent he’s looking to then. He’s met with a tense expression that makes him miss the threatening smiles Mr Argent gave Stiles whenever he suspected him and his friends of foul play.

 

“I don’t know. I’ve never encountered anything like this. It looks like either possession or very powerful black magic.”

 

Stiles closes his eyes for a moment. He turns slowly to glance at his own shadow. He knows he’s imagining the knife-slash grin that looks back at him.

 

“Are we killing people we could have saved if it’s possession and we shoot them?”

 

Pity isn’t an expression that looks good on Mr Argent. “It’s hard to say, but I think they are already dead. We’re just putting them down. But even that isn’t easy, they’re very … resistant to damage.”

 

Stiles thinks of Derek and how he sent him into the woods alone. Derek is very resistant to damage too, but is he that resistant?

 

“I need to find Scott,” he whispers and runs his hands through his hair as he begins to pace back and forth.

 

Mr Argent’s Emergency Voice is very similar to his dad’s. It makes Stiles feel like the only skittish animal present. “Scott is with Allison, Lydia, and Isaac. Allison will know where to head to under these circumstances.”

 

Stiles laughs again and there’s an edge of hysteria to it. “What, like a secret bunker you keep in case the end of the world comes?” He notices the perfectly serious, if slightly exasperated look on Mr Argent’s face the moment he says that.

 

“You’re kidding.”

 

Mr Argent ignores him while the sheriff clears his throat. Stiles turns away when his dad talks, only half listening, his attention drawn to the shuddering breath he hears from the cell bunk.

 

“Can you get Stiles there safely?”

 

“Yes,” Mr Argent says, grave like it’s a blood oath. Stiles wants to turn around and argue, but he’s distracted, already walking towards the holding cells and leaving his dad to ask questions and plan strategy with Mr Argent.

 

There’s another family huddled in the back, three women with curly black hair and an older man who stares into nothing with his mouth open and eyes glassy. One of the women looks over and Stiles can see her dark lips moving in a silent prayer. She makes the sign of the cross and he turns away.

 

The boots and khaki trousers belong to another deputy. There’s blood on his shirt and his arm is in a makeshift splint.

 

The cell is locked and Stiles’s heart is beginning to pound in his chest. The smell of something earthy invades his nose and he thinks of those stupid, barren terracotta pots on Derek’s roof.

 

He remembers the deputy sitting at their dinner table, drinking coffee with his dad. His name is Olivero and his mother is Mexican; he speaks of her often and fondly.

 

Stiles can’t comprehend why they’d lock the cell and he walks closer, trying to catch sight of Olivero’s face. It’s turned away from him and the deputy lies very still.

 

Stiles turns his head and opens his mouth to call out to the Sheriff, “Dad, is Olivero o—”

 

There’s motion in his peripheral vision and Stiles jerks his head back around.

 

Olivero twitches violently and lurches off the bed. His eyes are white and he spatters the floor with blood-slicked spit. The intake of breath he takes goes on forever, thin and reedy like his windpipe is being squeezed in at the same time.

 

“Stiles, get away from there!”

 

Stiles can’t move and Olivero— _not Olivero not Olivero_ , his instincts scream in terror—is fast, grasping for him through the cold metal bars. “Dad,” he whispers and then he’s getting grabbed from behind and yanked out of the creature’s range.

 

Arms reach after him and the blank-eyed deputy releases a sound of longing that’s soul-achingly human for a brief second before the noise rises to a fevered shriek. Stiles’s mind rattles and turns uselessly, getting caught on details like Olivero’s blank eyes and the unnatural glow at the back of his black throat.

 

There’s noise, running footsteps, screams and motion. Stiles is vaguely aware of his dad holding him by the arm, pulling him out of the way as somebody steps past them.

 

Chris Argent’s gun goes off once and the inhuman shrieking comes to an instant halt. Stiles watches as Olivero stands there for a moment, a black hole in the middle of his forehead, then blood spills down over the former deputy’s ashen skin and he falls into a heap on the floor.

 

There’s a blood and brain matter rorschach on the far wall behind Olivero’s crumpled corpse. Stiles makes a noise that might be a hysterical bark of laughter, completely inappropriate. He thinks he sees a tree and he wonders if Miss Morrell would calmly tell him to keep going while hell closes in.

 

The sheriff turns and draws Stiles into an abrupt but firm embrace.

 

Stiles lifts his hands to grip his dad’s shirt, fingers curling around the sheriff’s badge on the sleeve. “Don’t,” he says, choked, because he knows what his dad will say next.

 

The sheriff has to make an effort to untangle them when he finally pulls back. He looks to Mr Argent. “Get him safe,” he says, tired but firm. “Find the other kids. Scott, Melissa, get them all safe.”

 

“I’m not leaving, we need to—to talk about this,” Stiles finishes. A part of his brain is still interested in how things work, wants to know more, while the rest is utterly terrified and trying to initiate the fight or flight response.

 

His dad grasps his shoulders and looks at him, like he does when he’s serious. When he’s too tired but needs to go on for Stiles, for them both. “Chris can tell you everything we know. I need you somewhere safe, okay? Phones are out, but the police radio still works so I’ll keep in touch through that.”

 

“You need to come too,” Stiles whispers but he knows his dad can’t walk away from people in need. The emotion that coils inside of him at the thought is dark and ugly as it screams _who cares if strangers live or die_.

 

“I’ll come find you as soon as I can,” his dad says and then they’re hugging again, desperate and warm. Stiles doesn’t want to let go, but his dad’s mind can’t be changed and his best friend is out there somewhere.

 

It tears at his insides to leave, but he does. He wonders if this is how werewolves feel when the pack is scattered.

 

[x]

 

Not only does he have to leave his dad behind, he has to leave the Jeep. Mr Argent’s black SUV is a more sensible choice when zombies are prowling the streets, and after a token protest Stiles gets in quietly.

 

It comes as no surprise that Mr Argent has a police radio in his assortment of armaments. Stiles is acutely aware of the assault rifle on the back seat and the box of ammo at his feet. He thinks of all the zombie movies and games and wonders if all hunters prepare for the apocalypse as seriously as Mr Argent clearly did, or if Allison’s father is just more paranoid than your average hunter.

 

The fact that he has lived as long as he has is a strong vote in favor of extreme paranoia.

 

“I’m going to guess that deputy Olivero was bitten by one of those things,” Stiles says to break the tense silence. He can see Mr Argent’s jaw tense, but he keeps his eyes on the chaos that has been spreading onto the streets.

 

“He was.”

 

“So are they turning from a bite, or—” Stiles has to pause and scrabble for purchase when the car jerks and slips around a truck that’s sideways on the road. Mr Argent would have had a promising career as a race car driver, Stiles thinks, because he drives the monstrous beast of an SUV like it’s a much smaller vehicle.

 

“—or are we talking any exchange of fluids here,” he finishes the question, proud of the way his voice stays steady despite the cacophony of terror screaming inside his brain.

 

Mr Argent glances at him, his eyes piercing. “We’re not sure. Best to avoid any contact until we know more.”

 

“Right.”

 

Zombies on the streets, yet a part of Stiles’s brain feels like treating it like a science experiment. He curls in on himself slightly, arms across his body and hands tucked to his sides. Outside, he thinks he can see something in an alley, a moving mass of limbs and wet liquid on the pavement, but they drive by too fast for him to see any details.

 

Stiles closes his eyes for a moment and the Nemeton is waiting for him. The smell of rotting wood suddenly overpowers the plastic smell of the car’s interior, and Stiles jerks in his seat, opening his eyes.

 

Mr Argent’s hands twitch on the wheel like his first instinct at the sudden movement was to go for his gun. It probably was, from what Stiles has seen of the hunter when he gets startled.

 

“You alright?”

 

“Yeah,” Stiles says instantly, because there’s no way he’s telling Mr Argent that he might be insane and this might all be in his head. He’s giving serious thought to a theory about the nogitsune still being in him. That he just imagined being free and now it’s putting his mind into such a scenario that Stiles won’t have any choice but to tap out of reality and hand over the reins.

 

He wonders where that leaves him. If the zombies are his madness, does that mean he needs to fight them?

 

“Do I get a gun?”

 

The question is abrupt, but Mr Argent doesn’t seem surprised, nor does he hesitate. “I’ll give you a handgun and show you how to use it once we’re there.”

 

“I know how to use it,” Stiles says and stares out the dark-tinted window. He doesn’t really want to use one, but he knows how. “Does it need to be a head shot?”

 

“That drops them quickest,” Mr Argent says, and Stiles wonders how long it will take before he can talk in that same toneless voice. He might never get to that point, seeing how the town is overrun with zombies and Stiles is the comedic relief sidekick who has to die sooner rather than later.

 

“It’s better to run than stay and aim for the perfect shot if you’re not sure you’ll hit,” Mr Argent warns. “Don’t get cornered and don’t let them touch you. Whatever it is, it probably isn’t airborne but don’t rule anything else out.”

 

 _Or it is airborne, it just takes longer that way_ , Stiles thinks. His fingers grip the edge of the seat, squeezing and loosening rhythmically.

 

“What about werewolves?”

 

Mr Argent hesitates, keeping his eyes on the road. “I don’t know,” he confesses. “Let’s hope they’re immune. A lot of things that humans catch don’t work on them.”

 

Stiles licks his lips. He thinks Mr Argent doesn’t hope that for the sake of the werewolves, he hopes because the thought of a werewolf catching … whatever this is and turning rabid is utterly terrifying. If the humans move fast, the werewolf would be an unstoppable killing machine.

 

“I made Derek go look in the woods at the crash site. He never came back.”

 

“Derek can take care of himself,” Mr Argent says firmly like there is no room for arguments. No room to voice the doubts that sit heavy in Stiles’s mind, the guilt that coils inside his gut.

 

Stiles chews on his lip in silence for several minutes. Something in the distance is burning, smoke billowing into the ugly, orange horizon. He leans his head to the side, rests his forehead against the cold glass, and tries to get past the feeling of _wrongness_ that permeates his consciousness, his whole being.

 

“Allison can take care of Scott, right?” He knows it’s that way around. Scott shines when others support him, but alone he’s bound to make bad choices. Allison is strong like her dad without any of that taciturn bullshit.

 

“Allison knows what to do. She’ll meet us where we’re going and she’ll bring Scott.”

 

“Okay. Good.” Stiles swallows and doesn’t speak again. There are other names he hasn’t spoken out loud that go through his head— _LydiaDannyIsaacMelissa_ , even _Peter_.

 

He’s playing priorities with his friends’ lives. He has a list of who he wants to get to safety first, and that’s horrible. He wonders if Mr Argent finds difficult choices easier after years of making them, or if it always feels like shrapnel in his chest.

 

 _Peter_. Peter told him to be careful. Or Peter’s evil-but-actually-good-twin told him that, because there is no way _Peter Hale_ cares if Stiles gets eaten by a zombie. He wonders how far from Beacon Hills Peter has already gotten. He told Derek to skip town when the alpha pack came around, so Stiles expects Peter to take his own advice now.

 

It isn’t a bad plan. Stiles thinks he can talk Scott and the others into it, even Mr Argent, so his dad will have to relent.

 

He’s shaken out of his thoughts when Mr Argent curses quietly under his breath. It’s alarming because Stiles can’t recall Mr Argent being one for blatantly rude words. It’s probably a parent thing.

 

“What—” he starts to ask, but then he sees it too. The bridge they just got to is a clusterfuck of metal and flashing ambulance lights. It looks like several cars collided in the middle, leaving windows shattered and doors twisted.

 

Shapes move between the broken metal frames of the cars and there’s screaming again, human and inhuman mixing together and jarring Stiles’s mind with urgency that sends his heart pounding.

 

A nature documentary plays in his head, predators taking down hapless prey with sharp teeth tearing at throats, but the scene before him plays out with humanoid forms rather than animals.

 

Arterial blood sprays are so bright they look fake to Stiles. They probably use darker blood in movies because it looks more realistic.

 

They can’t go forward. _That way lies death_ , Stiles thinks hysterically while the grotesque and unnatural survival act goes on before them.

 

Mr Argent puts the car on reverse, but never manages to get anywhere. Stiles sees movement and has a second to recognize a pickup truck that’s coming straight for them.

 

The impact sends them slamming into the bridge railing.

 

Stiles is yelling, jerked in the grip of the seat belt until he has no breath, covering his head with his arms as tiny pieces of glass rain on him. He can’t hear anything but his own frantic breathing for a moment, and he thinks he probably hit his head on the window before it shattered because everything feels a bit fuzzy.

 

Mr Argent is telling him something, but then he’s wrenching the car door open and _wait_ is what Stiles wants to yell because that makes no sense. You never get out of the car in zombie movies unless you want to die.

 

When he looks up, he sees that they’re stuck between the car that rammed into them and the bridge railing that keeps them from tipping into the river. The water is dark and looks bottomless.

 

Gunshots go off and the inside of the pickup truck is red, but Stiles thinks it was red even before Mr Argent went to execute whatever was trying to claw its way out. A body hits the ground and Stiles watches as Mr Argent takes the driver’s seat, the door still hanging open. The old stick shift groans and the car stalls when Mr Argent tries to back it away from the SUV.

 

Movement from the front catches Stiles’s eye. It’s another nurse, but he doesn’t know him. The man is turning his head, rotating it with crackling sounds, staring straight at Stiles with his unseeing, blank eyes.

 

The spark that finally lights up the creature’s gaze isn’t recognition, it’s that terrible hunger again.

 

The window is shattered on the driver’s side. The window is shattered, and the—the _zombie_ is going for it, trying to crawl in like that girl hiding under beds in Japanese horror movies, all twisted limbs and scuttling in jerking motions.

 

Stiles is clawing himself out of his seat belt, breathing hard, when bullets hit the creature’s back in wet thuds. It doesn’t stop because Mr Argent doesn’t have the right angle for a headshot and _they’re very resistant to damage_.

 

It’s obvious which one of them will reach him first if he keeps still, so Stiles takes the only way out through the window, fumbling with his limbs, desperately scrabbling for a hold on the car’s roof, the bridge railing, anything.

 

Instead he slips and falls off the bridge with barely a sound escaping his lips.

 

Maybe he’s in shock, because it feels like nothing when the black water rushes to meet him. The last thing he hears before the current drags him under is Mr Argent’s voice yelling his name.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SUPER SLOW UPDATE I AM SORRY. I'm also sorry for the almost literal cliffhanger. The good news is that the next chapter has Stiles and Peter interacting again. Woo!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clawing his way up a muddy shore, Stiles finds himself soaking wet and trembling like a newborn foal, but still alive.
> 
> He throws up water and it smells like the swamp, feels thick like mud when it comes out of him, choking him. He gags and coughs harder, panics and heaves until it feels like his insides might come out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's an update in honour of Steter week! I hope you're all enjoying the delicious offerings the pairing's fans are producing!
> 
> An extra warning for this chapter! There are very mild suicidal thoughts at the beginning of the chapter, so beware if you wish to avoid those sort of things. Skipping to 'He might warm the bench' gets you right over that bit.

**IV**

 

Getting dragged along by a powerful current seems to be the story of Stiles’s life for the past few years. The current being the supernatural shitstorm that hit the fan after Peter _fucking_ Hale bit his best friend in the woods.

 

Too bad he can’t appreciate life metaphors when the current is quite literal and dragging him under where he _can_ _’t breathe_.

 

He thinks he might panic, but suddenly everything around him is silent and dark like somebody turned a switch and he’s in an endless ocean of silence, no surface or bottom in sight, just him and an infinity of blue.

 

It can’t be real, his fucked up mind is playing tricks on him again, and Stiles knows he’s drowning, but for a moment he wonders if it wouldn’t be such a bad way to go.

 

The surface means massacre and chaos. There’s silence under the water, a treacherous safety and way out that whispers to him.

Curling dark roots break the serenity, flashing across his vision. He jolts hard, bubbles escaping his lips. Just like that, the calm vision of a quiet watery tomb vanishes, and he’s in the river again, a ragdoll in the water’s cold grasp.

_No_. His dad and his friends are still out there, and he refuses to fade out.

 

He might warm the bench more often than not when they play lacrosse, but Stiles is a strong swimmer. The current is relenting down the river, and he starts to fight against it, fight until he gets his head above the surface and is sucking in a quick breath.

 

He goes under again, but he got enough air in to soothe his burning lungs, and he finds enough strength to kick towards the shore. There’s a nook in the river, and he gets out of the slower current into the bend where the water is only moving sluggishly.

 

Clawing his way up a muddy shore, Stiles finds himself soaking wet and trembling like a newborn foal, but still alive.

 

He throws up water and it smells like the swamp, feels thick like mud when it comes out of him, choking him. He gags and coughs harder, panics and heaves until it feels like his insides might come out.

 

When he looks down, he expects to see a mess of something murky and dark and maybe bloody, but it’s only water, clear and faintly fishy in scent but nothing like the smell of decay he imagined.

 

Stiles crawls forward despite the urge to slump in the grass and stay there. Panic is setting in again, flashes of white eyes haunting him, the knowledge that nowhere is safe thick in his throat and heavy in his heart.

 

He feels like the weak gazelle, separated from the herd. He has watched enough Animal Planet to know there is no happy end to that story. The hysterical laugh claws at his throat, but he refuses to release it.

 

“Had a pretty good run for a human,” he says to himself, throat scratchy and voice breaking.

 

Still, he isn’t about to roll over and wait for death to come. He might as well crawl on and go down kicking and screaming when the time comes. A tiny spark of hope inside still thinks that Scott might find him before the bad things do.

 

After he’s had a moment of respite, he upgrades from crawling to walking, dripping water with each step. He lost a shoe in the river and his sock sloshes pitifully on the grass.

 

He isn’t sure where he is exactly, but it looks like a suburb that he doesn’t recall visiting before. The pastel-colored houses look ridiculous in the light of the impending apocalypse.

 

Zombiepocalypse. It isn’t as funny of a word now that it’s actually happening.

 

Much as Stiles doesn’t like Mr Argent, he still acknowledges the fact that Allison’s dad would easily make his top ten list far as zombie disaster survivors goes. So he starts trudging back towards where he fell off, and he hopes Mr Argent is already heading down.

 

He progresses for two pastel rows before he pulls to an abrupt halt.

 

Up ahead, a group of young men are looting a house, stripping anything usable or valuable and carrying it into their van. They’re blind to the woman walking towards them over the perfect lawn, her jerking motions carrying her over a fallen lawn ornament and her white eyes lit up in an eerie glow.

 

Stiles backs away slowly, making less noise than the looters. His heartbeat is spiking, but at least the creatures can’t seem to hone in on that like werewolves can.

 

He’s starting to think it might be a better idea to hide somewhere until he can come up with a way to avoid the creatures or summon his friends to him.

 

Stiles is shivering from the cold, trying to come up with a solution to his multitude of terrifying problems, and before he even really stops to think about it, he wanders into a house that looks deserted, the door hanging open and no cars in the garage.

 

He swallows the ‘hello?’ before it manages to escape. Nothing good ever answers that call.

 

Maybe his dad was right, maybe he should have holed up in the basement, but right now that just sounds like a slower way to meet a gruesome end.

 

Warily inching into the house, he takes a step and listens for movement from inside. There’s nothing. A few of the lights are on, but whoever lived here did so in a hurry.

 

His gaze fixes on a retro radio, and he makes his way to it slowly, leaving a wet trail on the carpet.

 

The local channel he listened to in his Jeep gives nothing but static now. It comes through as a harsh, loud buzz, and Stiles jerks, nervously glancing around.

 

After several seconds of barely muted panic and waiting, he twists the volume low and goes through all the channels programmed into the radio. Several give more static, while others play merry tunes like the world isn’t ending.

 

He moves on to the TV, and there’s nothing on any channel, as if somebody simply forgot to program them in.

 

“Fuck,” he whispers, and as if on cue, the electricity goes out.

 

Wide-eyed, he stares out to see that it isn’t just this house. The entire town is going dark under an ominous orange sky. The sun rose red and now it’s falling to make way for an early dusk.

 

It stinks of the supernatural, and Stiles wishes he could get in touch with Deaton. The former Hale emissary might be infuriatingly cryptic, but maybe the zombie apocalypse would shake some real answers out of him.

 

But right now, there’s no Deaton. There’s no Scott either, and no Chris Argent with his guns and keen tactical instincts. There’s just Stiles, human in soaked clothes, unarmed and clawless.

 

He thinks about the looters and how the owners of this house are probably already either dead or far from here. Squaring his jaw, Stiles heads upstairs for the bedrooms, toeing out of his single wet shoe on the way.

 

The long hallway is shadowed and Stiles’s breathing feels as loud as thunder in the silence. His gaze jerks to the right at a spot of red on the wallpaper, but it’s just jagged line of crayon.

 

The child’s room is first, the door slightly ajar to show a flash of the room’s sickening pink interior. A flash of an opened stomach and pink innards goes through Stiles’s mind and he stumbles, lifting a hand to steady himself against the wall.

 

He swallows and goes on.

 

The master bedroom is all orange and tan. That seems to trigger no disturbing mental imagery, so he goes on to rummage through drawers, shamelessly pulling clothes out until he has a new t-shirt, jeans, socks, and underwear.

 

Throwing  a glance at the door, Stiles strips quickly and stands there naked in somebody else’s bedroom, watched by the faces of unknown relatives in photos.

 

He hesitates longest with the underwear, but once those are on, the rest goes on quick. Everything feels a bit loose, but not too much. The man might have been his dad’s size, and his heart constricts at the thought.

 

The sound of a dog barking outside the window shakes him out of his thoughts. He goes to look and freezes at what he sees on the backyard.

 

The dog, a scrappy little thing with coarse fur and a slightly curled tail, is barking at one of the creatures. It—the _thing_ —looks like a teenager, younger than Stiles, leaning heavily to one side with blood covering half its body.

 

Stiles feels faint already, frozen at what he thinks is going to be an animal’s bloody end, but the … the _zombie_ , might as well call the fucking thing that, is just standing there like it doesn’t even see the dog. No creepy jerking, no predatory approach, nothing. Nada.

 

_It_ _’s only interested in hunting humans,_ he realizes. A part of Stiles finds that fascinating, but it’s a relatively small part right now, considering there’s a contagious horror this close to where he is.

 

He swallows and slowly steps back to avoid obvious quick movements, but of course he bumps into something. He glances back just in time to see a fitness magazine fall off the edge of the bed. The glossy cover smiles at him, all perfect teeth and fake skin, mocking.

 

The thing that keeps the dead teenager walking jerks its head up and stares straight at Stiles. Then it disappears out of his line of sight and a scrabbling noise follows.

 

_It_ _’s coming up the wall._

 

Stiles whirls around and takes off. The bedroom door bangs loudly as he hits it with his shoulder, stumbling into the hallway and down the stairs like the devil is on his heels, which could be true for all he knows.

 

There’s a horrible, inverted rattle of a breath from upstairs and erratic thumps. Stiles glances back when something hits the staircase railing, and that’s when he runs straight into something unyielding.

 

He’s already screaming and trying to bring his arms up to cover his head, caught between the body he ran into and the one coming for him down the stairs. He’s going to die, he’s going to die shrieking and alone, separated from his dad and his best friend—

 

Stiles gets shoved aside and he stumbles, turning to land hard on his rear. He watches in a daze as _Peter Hale_ catches the charging monster by the arms.

 

Peter, who is the person possibly lowest on his list of potential rescuers. Peter, who was supposed to ditch Beacon Hills at the first sign of trouble. His frantic mind can’t come up with an answer for why Peter is still in town and _saving him._

 

While Stiles gawps, Peter spins and brings the zombie to the floor in a hard slam that would have snapped a human spine. It probably does snap something if the sound of breaking bone is any indication, but the creature just keeps trying to get at Peter with its open maw. The werewolf grips it by the throat and Stiles can see his claws, Peter’s face twisted into a fanged grimace.

 

Before Stiles can say anything, do anything, Peter is digging his claws in deep and tearing the zombie’s head clean off with a jerk of force that wouldn’t be possible for a human. There’s no spray of blood, only a sticky flow of something dark that looks more like tar than blood to Stiles.

 

The zombie is perfectly still now, and for all intents and purposes, seems to be dead for good. Peter straightens, and then he’s pulling out a handkerchief to clean his hands with.

 

Stiles has no idea what to say, so he says, “Peter,” with a tremor in his voice he isn’t proud of.

 

Peter turns when Stiles says his name, and then he’s discarding the handkerchief and coming over to grab Stiles by the arms. He’s lifted to his feet like he weighs nothing, but that isn’t the surprising part considering werewolf strength.

 

The surprising part comes when Peter Hale wraps an arm around Stiles and pulls him into his broad chest, so close that Stiles can feel werewolf body heat all up against his front.

 

Everything goes still, a moment of blank silence in Stiles’s head before his mind quickens into a buzz of unfinished thoughts. Body heat. Peter’s heavy hand pressed against his upper back. The faint scent of musk he’s beginning to associate with werewolves.

 

He’s trembling.

 

“Um,” he says when he finally finds his voice, because there’s a zombie apocalypse out there, and he’s hugging it out with _Peter Hale_.

 

Peter Hale, who saved his life.

 

His hands won’t keep steady when he lifts them to grip the sides of Peter’s soft shirt, resting his palms somewhere between the werewolf’s hips and lower back. He doesn’t even _like_ Peter, but he almost feels like crying in his arms nonetheless, the relief washing over him and rekindling the hope that he might live.

 

Peter’s nose touches the side of Stiles’s neck, a puff of warm breath tickling the skin there, and that’s when he finally realizes that he’s being scented, probably has been scented all along.

 

“Good, you’re not infected,” Peter rumbles and Stiles feels his face heat up.

 

“What—that’s what you were doing? Sniffing me for signs of mystery zombie plague?”

 

“Of course. What did you think I was doing?” Peter smirks. “I can hold you a bit longer if you like hugging.”

 

Peter’s arm tightens around Stiles, but he’s already trying to squirm away, ineffectively pushing at Peter’s chest with both hands.

 

“No, no I think we need to—shoes, I need shoes,” Stiles finishes blandly. Peter’s arm is like iron, so he gives up struggling before he injures his pride further.

 

Peter releases him then with a grand, magnanimous gesture, smirking in his infuriating manner.

 

Stiles draws in a deep breath. He also ignores the way Peter looks him over, the werewolf’s sharp gaze taking in the stolen clothing, accompanied by a slight flare of the nostrils. He stares at the sharp v of Peter’s shirt collar, focusing on that rather than letting his gaze stray to the mess lying on the floor.

 

“Your stolen clothes look better on you than your real ones.”

 

“Fuck off,” Stiles counters automatically, cheeks flushing. A brief flutter of anxiety makes his heart-rate spike because he doesn’t want Peter to go anywhere. Like fuck is he about to admit that, however.

 

Thankfully, the werewolf merely smirks before he’s moving to herd Stiles towards a pile of shoes by the front door, stepping up close so that Stiles ends up taking a step in the right direction.

 

“Afraid you’re stuck with me, precious.”

 

Stiles doesn’t say anything, but he’s relieved beyond words. Under the current circumstances, he’d accept help from just about anybody, especially werewolves and their super-everything.

 

Peter’s ruthlessness might even be a benefit. Stiles doesn’t see him stopping to hesitate just because one of the walking dead used to be a child.

 

Stiles laces on tennis shoes that fit almost perfectly, and then they’re standing on the porch, warily looking around. Trepidation makes him pull his shoulders up, arms crossed as he rubs his elbow.

 

“How did you find me?”

 

Peter gives him one of those patented Hale ‘are you stupid’ -looks, one eyebrow raised at a sharp angle. “I tracked your scent. Werewolf, remember?”

 

“Yeah, but … I mean, you must’ve been kind of close then? You can’t smell me from across town, can you?”

 

Stiles’s hesitant questions are met with an eyeroll and Peter doesn’t bother to answer, reaching to grasp Stiles by the elbow and pull him down the steps.

 

“Where did you lose Argent?”

 

“How did—ugh, right,” he corrects himself quickly before Peter can crank his bitch-face up to eleven. “On the bridge, we got attacked and I fell into the water.”

 

“Of course you did,” Peter mutters and Stiles glares at him for it because that feels normal between them. He wants for something to feel normal.

 

“Hey, human, remember? I’ve been doing pretty well all things considered.”

 

“Mm, I did offer to fix that for you once upon a time. You turned me down.”

 

Peter is great at multitasking because he’s scenting the air, herding Stiles along, and sassing him. Stiles kind of hates how confident the werewolf seems, and he wonders if he’d be like that if he had accepted Peter’s offer.

 

Being a human seems a lot less valuable when there’s a very high chance of dying and coming back mindless and wrong.

 

“Yeah, well. Shame you can’t do it now,” Stiles says in a subdued voice.

 

Peter glances at him and there’s something piercing in his gaze. He can probably hear Stiles’s elevated heart-rate and smell the traces of his panic-sweat, and that makes Stiles feel extra miserable.

 

“It might not seem like it right now, but there is value in what you are, Stiles,” the werewolf grudgingly says, startling Stiles. “You might not be able to fight them tooth and claw, but you have the potential to do powerful magic.”

 

“You mean if they don’t tear my throat open first and turn me into one of them,” Stiles says in a flat tone, because the chances of him doing powerful anything look pretty slim to him.

 

“Well, we’ll just have to keep you safe, won’t we?” Peter says and flashes a sly smirk, easy and careless. Stiles definitely hates Peter’s giant narcissistic ego, but somehow the tight feeling in his chest eases a little and he can breathe.

 

“Alright. Okay. What’s the plan? We need to find Mr Argent, and—and Scott’s out there, and have you seen Derek?”

 

Peter grimaces and shakes his head.

 

“If my nephew is still alive, he can handle himself. And ultimately, so can Argent.”

 

And there’s that bitch-face. Fucking Argent-Hale history.

 

“I know you don’t like him, and I kind of don’t either, but right now I do like all the guns he has,” Stiles says in an attempt to reason with Peter.

 

He watches as the werewolf scents the air again, looking towards the direction where the bridge is.

 

“I can smell a lot of them in that direction. Argent would have moved already.”

 

Peter turns his gaze on Stiles, calculating and intense. It makes him shiver slightly because there’s no mask in place then, no effort made from Peter’s end to appear normal and charming. Peter is a _monster_ , even for a werewolf, but right now he’s Stiles’s best hope for survival.

 

“Then what do you suggest?”

 

“We’re close to that … vet’s clinic, and he might have supplies that will come in handy against these creatures.”

 

“Mountain ash? Would that work on them?”

 

Peter makes a thoughtful noise. “Perhaps. They certainly stink of foul magic and might not be able to cross warded areas.”

 

“Which makes things like getting rest safer,” Stiles deduces and has to admit that the trip to Deaton’s might be worth it.

 

Not only that, but Deaton is a powerful emissary, much more useful in a situation like this than Stiles is, but he doesn’t bother pointing the obvious out loud.

 

Peter’s knife-slash grin reminds him of the Nogitsune, and he has to keep himself from recoiling.

 

“Clever boy. Off we go, then.”

 

[x]

 

Stiles might have stolen some clothes from somebody’s house, but Peter is about to steal a motorcycle. It’s a sleek, black thing, but it’s lying on the street with scratches running across its paint job and the keys still in its ignition.

 

Peter lifts it easily—like the motorcycle is made of cardboard—and sets it down upright with his werewolf strength. It confirms what Stiles always suspected, that Peter was lying when he claimed he wasn’t at full strength yet.

 

“Can you even drive that thing?” he asks and flicks his gaze around. There’s no trace of the driver—or there is, but Stiles doesn’t want to think about the tracks on the pavement that look like blood.

 

“You’d be surprised what I can do. Get on, sweetheart. I’m taking you for a ride.”

 

Stiles rolls his eyes at the endearment and mutters ‘creep’ under his breath. He gets on behind Peter, and after a moment’s hesitation, wraps his arms tightly around the werewolf’s midsection.

 

The werewolf rumbles his approval, and then the motorcycle rumbles under them. Stiles’s arms tighten around Peter as they take off.

 

He’s still cold, so he presses his face into Peter’s back and closes his eyes for a moment, trying to hide from reality in the shadow of the werewolf’s body heat.

 

The Nemeton stands alone on a field of black soil, endless branches coiled around each other and reaching for a dark sky. When Stiles walks towards it, white fingers begin to push through the soil, and the field is soon filled with reaching arms.

 

The risen fill the area around the Nemeton like trees used to.

 

Stiles jerks against Peter’s back, opening his eyes, nearly gagging on the ghost smell of rot. Peter turns his head, nostrils flaring once, but he soon has to focus on driving again. Stiles’s heart is rabbiting, but with one ear pressed to Peter’s back, he can hear the werewolf’s heart keep a steady, calming pace.

 

He spaces out for a while like that, trying to avoid thinking about his dad and friends even though his thoughts inevitably spin around the same track.

 

Guided by werewolf senses, they avoid trouble. Stiles feels exposed and is having terror visions of the zombies tearing him off the motorcycle, but Peter avoids busy streets and drives through pathways cars couldn’t take.

 

Peter pulls to a halt in front of the vet clinic, and Stiles can feel him tense. He looks over and sees that the door is hanging open slightly, nobody in sight.

 

“Is there—” he starts at a whisper, but falls silent when Peter holds a hand up. He kills the engine and they just sit there, staring at the door that is ajar.

 

The werewolf listens for several minutes, head cocked to one side. Stiles stares at the sliver of black until he loses track of time.

 

He comes back to his senses when Peter turns to nudge him off the motorcycle. “Nobody is inside. Come on.”

 

Stiles lets Peter go first and doesn’t follow until the werewolf pushes the door open enough for the black sliver to expand into a view of the reception room. Peter treads lightly, soundlessly, while Stiles’s tennis shoes squeak against the floor and he winces.

 

The mountain ash door hangs open, and chairs have been knocked over. Stiles knows the signs of a struggle when he sees them. His heart pounds at the implications, because mountain ash won’t do anything if the zombies got to Deaton here.

 

Yet there’s no blood. No stench of rot that Stiles can detect, no dirt and no odd tracks of any sort.

 

He looks at Peter and finds the werewolf looking thoughtful, scenting the air carefully before he’s sliding past the open mountain ash door, heading to the back.

 

Stiles nearly jumps out of his skin when the caged dogs start barking furiously. It doesn’t last long—he doesn’t see Peter’s face when he turns his gaze on the animals, but he can imagine there was an epic werewolf glare because every single dog falls silent immediately. Only the cats are left hissing and bristling at them.

 

The scent of sage assaults his senses in the operation room, a smashed glass jar filled with the dried herb sitting on the floor.

 

It isn’t the only broken thing. A fight took place in the room, leaving scalpels and other medical equipment scattered on the floor and things knocked down from the shelves.

 

Stiles’s mind is working furiously, his brow creasing. “If those things got in here, then wouldn’t they have killed him right here? There’d be blood. What got him?”

 

“I smell humans,” Peter says slowly like he’s considering whether to share with the class at all. It makes Stiles want to grab the werewolf’s stupid v-neck and shake him, because this is no time to be keeping things to yourself.

 

“And?”

 

“Only humans,” Peter answers with a meaningful look.

 

Stiles doesn’t get it, but he hasn’t understood anything from the moment this all started happening. He doesn’t like the feeling of being lost because he needs to _know_ things. Information is his primary—his _only_ weapon.

 

“Humans took him. Why would humans come in here and take him? Humans he fought against?”

 

“I don’t know,” Peter says in an infuriatingly condescending tone considering he seems as clueless as Stiles is. “What I do know is that he keeps supplies we might need, so I suggest we grab everything we can and leave before your loud mouth starts attracting attention we don’t need.”

 

“Fuck you, Peter,” Stiles mutters with some heat, but he can’t deny the fact that Peter has a point. They don’t know anything, and they can’t stay here, so he kneels by a cabinet and digs into Deaton’s secret stash of Important Druid Shit.

 

His fingers tingle when he touches a jar of mountain ash.

 

“Hey,” he says when Peter brings a bag over. “Any thoughts on what’s causing this? ‘Cause Mr Argent was saying it’s either possession—” his voice doesn’t tremble, _it doesn_ _’t_ “—or some kind of black magic.”

 

“How astute of him,” Peter drawls and Stiles has to remind himself that he really needs Peter right now. “It’s quite obviously what many call ‘black’ magic.”

 

“A darach?” Stiles asks in a low voice. His hands are moving mechanically, piling anything that looks even remotely usable into the bag, medical supplies and spell ingredients alike.

 

“No single person could cause something of this scale,” Peter answers.

 

Not Jennifer, then. Unless she found several like-minded friends after she vanished.

 

“Okay, how do we stop it?”

 

Peter snorts. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be ripping them to pieces with my bare hands. Take that box,” he tells Stiles, and Stiles obeys without wasting time on questioning how Peter knows what to take.

 

“Lydia,” he says suddenly, looking up at Peter. The werewolf cocks his head down at Stiles, calculating and silent.

 

“They’re—they’re dead, right? So … banshee. Lydia. She might, I don’t know, feel something? Do you think there’s a—a spirit in those things still? Something to talk to?”

 

“I don’t know,” Peter says again, but this time it sounds thoughtful and he’s staring at Stiles with an odd look. Like he sees something impressive. It isn’t the first time Peter Hale has regarded him in such a manner.

 

The look used to make Stiles’s skin crawl, but right now Peter feels like the most normal thing in his world, and isn’t that a fucked up thought.

 

“You might be on to something, however. We will have to locate Miss Martin.”

 

Stiles nods, a jerky motion, and then he goes back to stealing spell components from a vet that isn’t a vet at all.

 

The tiny flutter of hope in his chest feels like a fragile, weak thing, but it warms him nonetheless.


End file.
